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Theatre Work
This is a small section - though it has to be said I lit a show in the Assembly Rooms Edinbrough by Red Shift in 1992 on the subject of Virgina Woolf ,written by Robin Brooks, Orlando.
My entry to theatre was via Red Shift's co-founder and Designer Charlotte Humpston. Charlotte co-founded Red Shift, a successful and innovative Theatre Company with Jonathan Holloway. That's not insignificant as it means I had to bend what I knew from photography and film lighting, to live work in a very fast turnaround. In 2006, I lit the Snow Queen, another trial by fire at Brewhouse Theatre Taunton - as theatre people are never keen when people come in from other traditions - but I won them over. Then in 2008, a collaboration with Forkbeard Fantasy Dickens A Christmas Carol. WHich was interesting because Forkbeard were open to new ideas. |
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Circa 2005 I was asked to technically direct an Arts and Humanities Research Council research project on lighting in Jacobean Theatre productions - essentially these were seen in a Chamber of Demonstrations - which is the Jacobean name for a place to see plays, poetry, autopsies etc - under candlelight .
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In fact I oversaw the capture of sections of plays under candlelight - then constructed a complex DVD where you could switch between veiwpoints around the 'Chamber'. See the project over view below for Professor Martin Whit's rationale for this project.
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In fact Dr Gordon Higson discovered the plans for a Jacobean theatre and this was actually built next to the Globe in London as the Sam Wanamaker Theatre. At that time Mark Rylance was the director of the Globe and come 2014/15 when Wolf Hall was commissioned, I was told that our DVD and lighting was shown to the Cinematographer Gavin Finney in his researches and what you next see in that production are the effects of our research (and also the lighting of the Mirror and the Light). Incidentally, my daughter Phoebe Flaxton was Production Buyer on this last production.
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PROJECT OVERVIEW THE CHAMBER OF DEMONSTRATIONS
by Martin White
This practice-led research project used a full-scale reconstruction of the interior of a Jacobean indoor playhouse. I have used this in the past for research purposes (including full productions, with an audience, of 'Tis Pity She's A Whore and Nathanael Richards' 1630s Roman shocker, Messallina). The particular focus of the project, however, was to explore the uses of candlelight in the playhouse, something which everyone mentions, but which has not been systematically explored. The Chamber of Demonstrations project began life under the title Working With Inigo Jones, but the research of Dr Gordon Higgott increasingly called in question the safety of that, and it was decided to retitle it.The project had two main objectives:
However, the documentation and dissemination of practice is essential for it properly to be conceived of, and available to the wider community, as research.
by Martin White
This practice-led research project used a full-scale reconstruction of the interior of a Jacobean indoor playhouse. I have used this in the past for research purposes (including full productions, with an audience, of 'Tis Pity She's A Whore and Nathanael Richards' 1630s Roman shocker, Messallina). The particular focus of the project, however, was to explore the uses of candlelight in the playhouse, something which everyone mentions, but which has not been systematically explored. The Chamber of Demonstrations project began life under the title Working With Inigo Jones, but the research of Dr Gordon Higgott increasingly called in question the safety of that, and it was decided to retitle it.The project had two main objectives:
- The first was to erect a full-scale reconstruction of the stage and auditorium of an indoor Jacobean playhouse based closely on the drawings (previously generally attributed to Inigo Jones but now likely to be by John Webb) that are held in the library of Worcester College, Oxford. Working on this reconstruction with a group of professional actors, I wished to explore in particular the effects that could be achieved in candlelight, and through the use of various portable lighting instruments. This is a key aspect of early modern performance; this was the first detailed practice-based exploration of it. Virtual Reality models (such as you can find on the DVD) are fine, and allow us to explore otherwise unrecoverable performance spaces, but, to my mind, they have a an 'unlived in' feel, quite unlike the texture and atmosphere of 'real' performance spaces.
However, the documentation and dissemination of practice is essential for it properly to be conceived of, and available to the wider community, as research.
- So the second objective became a question of how this work could be captured and published in a form that allowed interactive responses from the user. The answer came with the advent of High Definition cameras, capable of working in much lower levels of light than conventional cameras without losing definition in the image. My encounter with Ignition Films, a production company specialising in HD, provided a solution from the world outside academia that made the research ambition achievable.